In Iran During Protests – Did I Put Myself in Danger?

On 15^th November 2019 I traveled from Iraqi Kurdistan to Iran on land crossing the border between Penjwan in Iraq and Bashmaq in Iran. I was super happy and excited to be back in Iran. I had no idea that this trip was going to be different from the last one. I was afraid to write about this earlier but here I am with my story about what it was like to travel in Iran during protests.

If you wonder how I traveled to Iran from Iraq, here you are: How I crossed the Iraq-Iran border

The night I arrived in Mariwan in Iran, the Iranian government tripled the oil prices. It was a gigantic surprise for everyone.

On 16^th November around 12:00 I left my hotel to walk around in Mariwan. I wanted to go to the pharmacy and exchange money.

I witnessed the protests starting in Mariwan. First, I saw the taxi drivers blocking the roads at the intersections and cars lined up behind them. Then I saw barricades set up made from large trash containers. Some of them were lit.

As walking, I saw schoolkids from the age of 5 to 18 running around and shouting, and I saw some smoke. I couldn’t understand what was happening there. A big police car appeared. Seeing that, all the kids started screaming more while running away. The police just passed. They didn’t do anything. When watching the kids, it felt like some after school fun. It was a beautiful sunny day and I felt relaxed.

I was listening to the birds singing while walking. Around 13:00 I reached the guys doing currency exchange on the street as I needed to change Iranian Rials from Iraqi Dinars. I came from Iraq to Iran with Iraqi Dinars. Due to the fact that no foreign credit cards can be used in Iran, you need to come with a lot of cash to Iran. Preferably with Euros or Dollars but I was not bothered about exchanging them in Iraq.

The day before I just changed a little bit of money to see how this currency exchange business worked on the street.

There were a lot of men on the street exchanging money wearing traditional Kurdish dress. They offered me the rate from yesterday. Therefore, I wanted to quickly check the exchange rate for today on bombast.com and show it to them. But I couldn’t do so because my VPN apps didn’t work. On the regular exchange rate websites, you don’t have the real value of the Iranian Rial. That’s why I needed bombast.com. And crazy enough, this website only works with a VPN app. You have to access the internet from Europe to see the street exchange rate for the Iranian currency in Iran.

Do you know why you need VPN in Iran? I’ll tell you! To get access to all the sites that the Iranian government blocks. For example, Facebook, YouTube and Couchsurfing are all blocked in Iran. And there are probably dozens of websites blocked such as my website. I think all WordPress websites are blocked. Why? WordPress websites are normally blogs. In blogs we can write about whatever we want. So better block all of them so that people don’t get used to them. I’m being sarcastic, of course. By the way, VPNs are illegal in Iran but everyone uses them.

So, about 15 men who exchange money on the street were around me. They all wanted to see what I was up to. “Just wait, I need to change the exchange rate!” I moved a few meters away and they came after me. They really wanted to get some business done. Me too but I was pretty annoyed. I was feeling disabled for not having access to the website with the exchange rates. Then, I left the square. I kept trying all the VPNs I had on my phone. I had no idea why they didn’t work.

Around 14:00 I went back to the hotel. I downloaded a lot of VPN apps and none of them worked. I was told that the government probably blocked them. It’s a normal thing to do when people start to protest for whatever reason.

At around 14:30 I went out as I didn’t want to waste more time. I wanted to walk to the Zeribar Lake which would have been like a half an hour walk. On the street, I bumped into some guys from my hotel. They left in the morning to drive to the lake. However, they couldn’t get there as all the roads were blocked. We decided to go to the lake on foot altogether. But before that we walked back to the hotel to drop our cameras. We were told that the police could assume that we were a group of journalists. I didn’t think it was necessary but whatever. After dropping our camera, we went out.

We just wanted to reach the Zeribar lake. Around 16:00 we were just walking among big trucks who were forced to stop as the roads were blocked. It was all peaceful. The truck drivers were just chatting quietly next to the trucks. Unexpectedly, our 4G was gone. First, they take away our VPN connection. Second, they take away our 4G. The Iranian government just decided to deprive me of the internet. I didn’t feel good about it. Shortly after that, we were told that it wasn’t safe to walk around this time. I think it was a big piece of exaggeration. Why talk of the devil? I felt totally safe. In any case, we got some food and walked back to our hotel. No lake for today.

Around 20:00 our hotel talked to me about the situation in Iran in relation to the protests. We had no idea what would happen tomorrow. The demonstrations might continue for a few days and can get intense. Or things might calm down if the government decided not to increase the oil prices so drastically. We were advised to leave Mariwan in any case and that it is maybe not a good time for foreigners to be in Iran. Honestly, I didn’t agree and I still don’t agree with it.

Most people in the hotel wanted to leave for Iraq. We were very close to the Iraqi border and Europeans don’t need a visa for Iraqi Kurdistan. I could have gone back to Iraqi Kurdistan anytime. But hey, I just came from Iraq the day before and paid 75 Euros for my Iranian visa. Therefore, I had no intention to go back to Iraqi Kurdistan.

I honestly didn’t think it was that serious that we had to leave. You can tell me: What do you know? I don’t know everything. But I knew demonstrations are not enough reason to leave a country.

In any case, it was quite wintery in the mountains and I just wanted to leave for some warmer place as I got a cold. After the Iraqi summer, I found myself in the winter and felt a bit sick.

I had no idea what to do. I’d been traveling for 2 months without a stop and I was pretty tired. I just wanted to rest.

At 21:45 I was just about to look for hosts in Baluchistan, planned on posting on Instagram and all of a sudden the Wifi was also gone. No VPN, no 4G, no WIFI. What a life! First, I felt like a spoilt kid whose favorite toy is taken away. Second, I thought about human rights. Access to the internet in the 21st century all over the world is a basic human right. We are basically deprived of checking, receiving and sharing information.

In fact, sites operating on Iranian servers worked but nothing that operates on foreign servers. As I don’t know Persian, I couldn’t use any of the Persian websites.

A week ago the same was happening in Iraq. People started to protest against the economic situation in Iraq. And what did they get in return? The Iraqi government took away their internet. Sidenote: I was not in this part of Iraq. I was in Iraqi Kurdistan. Iraqi Kurdistan is an autonomous region recognized by the Iraqi constitution. When you here about protests in Iraq, it has nothing to do with Kurdistan in Iraq.

I decided to leave super early in the morning next day for Tehran with some other guys by car. Tehran was approximately 700 km from our location. It was presumed that that at 8:00 the protests would start again and the roads would be blocked.

We didn’t have much petrol left but the petrol stations were mostly closed on the way. That was the only inconvenience which presented itself on our way to Tehran.

The petrol had such strong smell there! Look at this picture below. Here, I learnt that one litre costs 1,500 Toman (15,000 Rials=~0,10€) until you reach your quota which is 60 litre per month for a car. Once you exceed your monthly quota, you pay 3,000 Toman (30,000 Rials=~0,20€) for one litre fuel. There were men asking if we could sell some petrol to them at the lower price. We sold 8 liter from our quote to a man. He had a plastic pot and we filled his pot with 8 litre petrol. My friend didn’t need all his monthly quota and prefered supporting that guy. He didn’t even want to accept them money from him for the petrol. My friend knew that that guy needed it more than he.

Everybody has a petrol card and when you buy petrol, the amount will be recorded in the system.

These prices on the picture are new since 15th November for low-quality fuel. Earlier, the same fuel cost only 800 Toman. Buttomline, much less than now.

As for the quota system, it’s not entirely new. It was introduced by the previous president of Iran, Ahmadinejad (2005 – 2013). The law stipulated that if you finish your monthly quota, you can’t buy more petrol with your petrol card. However, this law was not enforced very strictly at that time and people found a way to get more fuel. Obviously, for that, they had to pay more.

We got loaded with fuel and finally we could enjoy our ride filled with awe. At the sight of these incredibly stunning mountains, you just forget all the problems created by humans. These mountains have a soul so rich in positive energies.

We were driving as fast as we could with our car. It felt like we are escaping to another planet. 

We were back in Tehran in the evening. There was no protest. The streets of Tehran downtown were peaceful just as I know Iran.

As of 18^th November, after three days that the protests started, we still had no internet. I couldn’t plan anything without internet.

I went to Ferdouzi sqaure in Tehran to exchange money. That’s where you go to exchange money. There are a lot of official exchange offices and loads of guys exchanging money just on the street. They are really nice and sweet when they ask with the intonation of Persian questions: “Exchange money?” The official offices don’t buy Iraqi Dinars. If they do, they would not pay more than 850 Toman which is peanuts. The exchange rate for selling Iraqi Dinars for Iranian Rial was much better in Mariwan than in Tehran. In Mariwan I sold 1 Iraqi Dinar for 950 Toman. In Tehran the best offer was 920 Toman for 1 Iraqi Dinar on the street. But this amount was the result of some negotiation with a guy who could speak Turkish. His first offer was 900 and I wanted 950 and in the end we agreed on 920 Tomans. So I sold like 210,000 Iraqi Dinars to one guy who could speak Turkish for 19,340,000 Iranian Rials. I believed that given the last street exchange rates from the internet from two days ago and the current economic situation, I should have got at least 1000 Tomans but whatever. What can I do? I had no internet to check it. They wanted also extra commission even though I told them if they had wanted my Iraqi Dinars, they should not have been asked for extra commission. In the end, I paid extra commission but 90% less what they asked from me initially. Anyways, this is business on the street. I didn’t want to spend hours with exchanging money. The guy told me that I was really tough. I took it as a compliment.

I got my money and went back to the hostel to plan the next couple of days. Still no internet. Thus, I decided to dive into this guide book a bit.

20th November 2019 was the 5^th day without internet. I was just dreaming about the notifications from my apps to come. I spent 3 days in Tehran hanging out downtown, south and north of Tehran. Life was totally normal. I asked every day about the news. Nobody knew anything.

On 21st November, I traveled to to Shiraz. I was on the way to Shiraz when I tried to figure out where I was going to stay that night. I was fishing for photos and contacts in my phone. I found a hotel bill from Shiraz from last year. Then, I found the number of a Facebook friend from Shiraz. I asked him to search for the number of this hotel. He did that so I could call the hotel and make a booking there. I didn’t want to stay in Shiraz for too long. It was too cold and I was exhausted from too much traveling.

In Shiraz, in the first day in the hotel I asked about the news and the internet. I’ll not lie. My main concern was the internet so that I can look for hosts in Baluchistan on Couchsurfing. They didn’t know anything. After this, I never asked again. I was just waiting.

In two days I’ve seen a gathering once which seemed to be some kind of protest. There were people walking or standing with boards. It was all very quiet.

“Iranian people are peaceful people. Even their protests are so quiet” – I told myself.

Other than that, life seemed to be normal. As usual, I enjoyed entertaining myself with taking selfies. I was walking around Shiraz for two days exploring both touristic and non-touristic parts. It was sunny. I appreciated the sun so much. I still had the cold. I was stuffing myself with garlic that I got from the market all day.

My plan was to explore Baluchistan where it’s around 30 degrees but I didn’t want to go there without internet. I waited two days in Shiraz and I spontaniously bought a bus ticket for Bandar Abbas and from there I flew to Dubai.

Iran was without internet for one week. The same day I left, they got the internet back.

All in all, I have absolutely no regret for traveling to Iran at such times. It was an undoubtedly interesting and eye-opening experience. I don’t really travel for the sake of touristic attractions but for the sake of learning about the world.

Should I have traveled to Baluchistan instead of Dubai? Yes, could be. As I said, Iran was totally safe the whole time. But I was a bit fed up from not having internet and pretty exhausted from traveling too much constantly and didn’t feel I needed more adventure, just comfort somewhere familiar.

Let me just reiterate that I personally don’t think that Iran was dangerous at that time. Not even a tiny little bit. I felt always completely SAFE. Demonstrations are normal anywhere in the world. As for being without the internet for one week in a foreign country, it was annoying because I had to rely on others too much which I personally don’t like. Moreover, I had zero idea about what’s going on in the world. Actually, I knew nothing about anything, unless I saw it. Nevertheless, it was interesting to live and organize life without the internet that I hadn’t done for like a decade.